IMC 2016: Sessions
Session 119: Medieval(ist) Fictions of the North: Telling Stories and Writing History
Monday 4 July 2016, 11.15-12.45
| Organisers: | Victoria Cooper, School of English, University of Leeds Timothy Rowbotham, Centre for Medieval Studies / Department of English & Related Literature, University of York Catalin Taranu, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
|---|---|
| Moderator/Chair: | Alaric Hall, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki |
| Paper 119-a | 'Truth' in Medievalist Fantasy: Interplay between History and Fiction in Videogames (Language: English) Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
| Paper 119-b | Kings, Fools, and False Dichotomies: History and Folktale in Gautreks saga (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Literacy and Orality |
| Paper 119-c | The Many Battles of Maldon: How Does an Event Become History? (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Old English, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Military History |
| Abstract | The borders between histories and fictions are just as porous and elusive today as they were in the Middle Ages, frustrating our scholarly expectations of clean-cut categories. The three papers explore the interplay between fiction, story-telling, historical remembrance and imagination in Old Norse fornaldarsögur, Old English heroic poems, and modern-day video games. All these discourses are proven to function both as histories and fictions, and story-telling is shown to be the privileged medium of thinking about the past. The papers discover spaces of history-making in the encounters between the Anglo-Saxon and Viking worlds, modern and medieval media, event and imagination. |